Mexican Mint Marigold October 27, 2022

 This first picture is yellow Flame Acanthus, mot Mexican Mint Marigold.  But it looked real pretty so I included it in this post.  It is also a fall bloomer.  And the yellow is rare, the common color is deep orange.  Mexican Mint Marigold is known as Texas Tarragon.  The strong anise flavor is often used as a Tarragon substitute because Tarragon does not like our heat here in the South.

The very pale lavender daisy-like flowers are Country Girl Mums.

At the Farm October 26 - 27, 2022

 

Monarch on a Mexican Sunflower.

Drove to the farm before work on Wednesday and worked from home.  

I prepped beds with mushroom compost in the Vegetable Garden.  I planted 3 red cabbage plants, 2 mustard greens and 4 Brussels sprouts.  I sowed several rows of wrinkled kale.  Thinned all my seedlings that have popped up.

Deadheaded my Mexican Sunflowers.  They are so pretty now.

We had a couple of inches of rain on Tuesday, so that is great news.

All of my milkweed pods have burst open.  I gathered the silky threads and the seeds attached and spread them throughout the beds in the Star Garden.

 Sowed a packet of red poppies in the Rose Garden.

I watered my new trees around the Rose Garden even though it had rained. 

The butterflies are everywhere.  So, so, so pretty.  The blue mist flower is beginning to bloom.  They love the blue mist flower nectar.  Monarchs, Painted Ladies, Gulf Fritillaries, Queens, all kinds of swallowtails, sulphurs and lots of the small brown ones.

The corncockle has sprouted and all the Moss Verbena has sprouted that I sowed.  The Larkspur is emerging.  All the Tall Poppy Mallow, Coreopsis and Brown eyes that self-sow are up and going strong.  Spring will be beautiful.  The weather is beautiful.  All is right with the world.

After work I went outside and watched the moths flitting around the blue mist flower that had been covered with butterflies only a few hours earlier.  

I pulled up basil and gomphrena in the Rose Garden so that I could sow seeds.  I sowed Johnny Jump-ups, pom pom poppies and Ox Eyes in the Rose Garden.

I pulled up some white salvia in the White Garden and planted a flat of Sweet Alyssum all along the border edges.  Fertilized and watered.

My Mexican Mint Marigold is beginning to bloom.  I really love that pop of fall yellow.  And the anise scent is wonderful when it moves in the breeze or you brush against the leaves.

I stayed outside listening to the the crickets and Cicadas until darkness fell.  It gets dark early now, and we haven't even gotten to daylight savings.

Thursday.  Up before daylight.  Out the door at dawn (which sounds a lot more enterprising than it really is since it's getting light later now. 

I added some mushroom compost to one of my newest vegetable beds and planted 2 collards.  And I planted one in a feed bucket.  I did some weeding in there.  The parsnips have popped up, they are the last seeds to emerge.  In the Vegetable Garden right now I have asparagus (which is always there because it's a perennial), cabbage, collards, mustard greens, lettuce, parsnips, red and yellow beets, red and orange carrots, brussels sprouts, cilantro, parsley, dill, and kale.  I sowed some marjoram because I absolutely love it, but it has not made an appearance yet.  The seeds are like dust, I'm always surprised when seeds like that germinate.  It seems like they are fighting all kinds of odds to live because the tiniest impediment could snuff out their growth.

I worked in the Rose Garden for a bit.  I pulled the chicken wire enclosures away from 2 roses in buckets.  Sprayed fungicide for black spot, as usual a few weeks too late.  Weeded.  I pulled up 3 huge Mexican Sunflower monsters that had fallen over.  And I staked several more that were leaning over.  Deadheaded Mexican Sunflower for a long while.  They bloom profusely, and spent flowers can really weigh the plants down.  The flowers aren't as big as the yellow sunflowers we all know and love, but they are large.  I did some more clearing paths.  I raked here and there.  Water my new trees near the Rose Garden - 3 With Hazels, 1 Parsley Hawthorn, and one Huisache.  The Rudbeckia that I dug up last week and moved to the Rose Garden are healthy.  I'm not surprised, the weather is cool now so all transplants will be successful.  Deadheaded roses.

Watered my new trees in and near the Dry Garden.  I don't like that name 'Dry Garden', but I'm afraid it's going to stick.  Guajillo, Cat's Claw, Pineland Wattle, Desert Willow, Anacachoe Orchid Tree, Two Winged Silverbell.  I have a Retama and a Senna nearby, but the Senna is getting irrigation and the Retama loves to be dry, so the recent rain was enough.

I went down to the Orchard to sow seed, and the leaf cutter ants have really made an entire village in there.  I put poison down on every hill entrance and wherever I saw trails.  I will have to keep on top of poisoning the entrances until they are driven out.  The queens (they have multiple queens in a colony) live about 20 feet down in the earth and could be at least that far from the entrance holes.  My poison might move them, but it won't kill them.  Ant bait is the only thing that will kill the queen.  The ants carry the bait down to the nest and turn it into fungus.  Fungus that the ants make from plant matter is the only thing leaf cutter ants eat.  I'm a bit hesitant to bait them because once the queen and her army die, the massive maize of tunnels will collapse.  And I will be left with a cavernous hole.  I have managed once successfully to kill one of these communities, and I was filling the hole with debris and dirt for months.  It was a huge hole that I could literally stand in.  I don't really want that mess right in the middle of my orchard.  They are a fascinating pest.  They can completely defoliate a fruit tree in 24 hours. 

I sowed Black Eyes, Moss Verbena, and Horsemint in the Orchard.  I did a little weeding.  

Dumped 5 bags of mushroom compost into the 2 arbor boxes in the Rose Garden that Bert repaired recently.  I will plant new Ballerina roses in them next week.

I spread a pound of Black Eyed Susan seed and a pound of Horsemint seed in the Meadow.

Headed home around 2:00 and stopped by the Antique Rose Emporium.  I bought 2 Ballerina roses and an Echantress rose.

 

Days at the Farm October 10 - 14, 2022

 

I took Monday and Tuesday as vacation and worked from the farm for a half day on Wednesday and took part of Wednesday and all of Thursday as vacation.  October is so beautiful.  The fall sunlight is different from the rest of the year.  I hate to miss a moment of it, but unfortunately our place is rented out for the next 3 weekends.  So time is precious.

I pulled up some of the artemisia in the Water Garden that Connie Gwyn gave me.  I love this one.  It is very low growing, like a ground cover.  And so pretty and white.  Artemisia loves sun and dry conditions.  I planted a plug in the center bed of the Star Garden and 4 sprigs in the Rose Garden.

I dug up 5 or so plugs of Goldsturm Rudbeckia that were growing at the very edge of the Dining Room bed and planted them in the Rose Garden.  This variety of rudbeckia blooms in the summer months after all the spring flowers are gone, and it's very hot outside.  It will give the Rose Garden a pop of yellow right when it gets really hot.

I deadheaded Mexican Torch sunflowers in the Rose Garden.  These beautiful giants (they grow 8 feet tall) are covered in orange flowers right now.  The butterflies and the bumblebees are crazy about them.   They are loaded with nectar.  I always pull up the plants that germinate in the early part of the summer because they get so damn tall, and they bloom in the fall.  Their branches are shearing off and they are toppling over way before their bloom time.  I leave the plants that germinate in the late summer because their size is (slightly) more manageable through the fall.  If you can stand the nuisance of them, the flowers are really pretty and the pollinators love them.

I cleaned out the center bed in Star Garden, the first bed I ever created here.  I cut back the Pringle Aster.  Weeded.  I cut back the Mellow Yellow hibiscus, a low-growing perennial cold-tolerant hibiscus. away from the paths.  I dug up a few seedlings from the path and moved them to the center of the bed.  Sprayed herbicide.  Raked.

I cut back lots of salvias in the Star Garden.  I made some space and sowed some dark blue Larkspur and some Corncockle seeds. I cut back the Pringle Aster in the long bed in the Star Garden.

Cut back all the Turnera in the Rose Garden.  I pulled one of them up, and it was such a chore that I wondered if it was a perennial.  I googled it, and sure enough they are perennials, so I pruned the rest of them.  I pulled up some of the chicken wire cages around my roses.  Those cages were to protect the roses from deer.  I hope I don't regret doing that.  The Maggie rose was finally revealed after I pruned all that Turnera.  It looks like voles have taken up residence around that rose, so I used the sprinkler water to soak the area and used my boot to mush down the wet soil.  I disturbed a copperhead while doing that, but I let it go.  No killing today.

I sowed turnips, marjoram, orange and red carrots and parsnips in the Vegetable Garden.

I planted a Calliandra Houstoniana in the Star Garden.  I planted it in the wrong place.  It gets really big.  But I needed to plant it, and I didn't know where to put it.  At least it's close to the house where I can watch over it the first winter.

Tuesday.  Mom's birthday.  We spoke on the phone.  Our big party was on Sunday.

Outside to the Star Garden at first light.  I sowed Ox Eyes and Black Eyed Susans in the Center bed.  

I went back to the Vegetable Garden and worked in there for several hours.  I weeded.  This time of year is that very flat-to-the-ground weed that you have to pinch right in the middle to get the tap root.  I used a forked hand tool to scrape at the soils and pull them up.  I sowed more red lettuce, the last of a kale mix I had from last year, some red and gold beets, more carrots, more turnips, more parsnips, cilantro (in the buckets) and parsley.  I hilled a lot of the planting that I did.  I usually don't hill my plantings because I am already working in raised beds.  But I did it this time.  I cleaned out the beds that I am going to sow rye grass in.  I laid down pine needles in some of the narrow areas where I will plant nothing, so I try to keep the weeds down.  

I sowed dark blue Larkspur and Corncockle in the Rose Garden.

Pulled up some more basil plants in the Rose Garden to make room for seeds.

More hole digging and bunch grass planting along the line where the path will be in the Dry Garden.

Spot watered in the Rose Garden.

Sprayed herbicide on the driveway and the path to the pool.

Pulled weeds in the beds near the pool. 

Wednesday.  I didn't start until after noon, and it was a pretty hot day.  Too bad.

I dug more holes, watered, fertilized and planted Blue Grama grass.  Trying to get rid of two flats of Blue Grama plugs is not easy.  All the Sideoats Grama has been planted.

I weeded in the Star Garden around the area where I planted the little Red Buckeye and sowed the Anise Hyssop.  I sowed Corncockle and dark blue Larkspur in the area where I weeded.  Deadheaded Goldsturm Rudbeckia on the other side of that path.

I staked some blue mistflower that was crowding a path.  And I staked two big clumps of milkweed.  

I dug holes and filled them with water to plant my 2 Strawberry Bushes - one is Euonymus myrianthus and one is nitidus.  Both have gold fruits, not the red fruit which is more common.  I planted them along the greenhouse.  It stays pretty shady there.  

Watered my Calliandra.

Inside for an hour or so.

Back outside and dug holes, etc in the Dry Garden.  I'm determined to finish planting my grass plugs before I leave on Thursday.  Normally it would be a simple 2 hour job to plant 3 flats of grass plugs, but since the soil is so hard and dry, it takes a long time to prep.  Spot watered in the Water Garden while I worked.

I did some weeding in the Vegetable Garden.  I planted 3 rows of winter rye (green manure) in the bed with the goat wire arbor.  I sowed a row of parsley in my newest bed.

Thursday.  We had to head home pretty early because we had tickets to the Astros game.  Cleaned up all my tools and staged the house for our Airbnb guests.

 

Days at the Farm October 8 - 9, 2022

 

We drove up on Saturday morning and stayed until Sunday early afternoon.  Friday night was dinner with the Big Six at Il Braco.  Sunday evening at Blake's for the October birthdays.  We had a team come in and cook hibachi style for the family.  They clean everything up, etc. and the kids were very entertained by the knife show.

• Over the last week or so I have purchased a lot of shrubs and grasses.  The shrubs came from the John Fairy October trunk show.  The grasses came from Buchanan's.
• I planted the Pineland Wattle last week while I was here briefly.  
• Today I spray painted some lines on the ground just past the Water Garden where I plan to create a xeriscape garden.  It is very near Bert's crawfish burn pile, so he will have to move it.  He burns up the crawfish bodies every year at the end of the party in a huge bonfire.  That area is very valuable real estate around this property because there are no trees (no shade).  This garden is adjacent to a water source, but it will not have any regular water.  I dug 10 or so holes, filled them with fertilizer and water (many times).  The soil is dry and gritty.  The drought is still relentlessly present.  
• I had a flat of sideoats grama which is a native bunch grass of Texas.  I cut each plant into two pieces and planted them as a buffer between the Water Garden and the Xeriscape Garden that I am building.  The Dry Garden (not sure what I'm going to call it yet) will be the most unusual garden I've built because I am not amending the soil for many of the plants I am putting in.  I am planting small, drought tolerant, native trees / large shrubs, and I am hoping that beyond some handfuls of mycorrhizal fungi in the holes and plenty of water, they will do okay.  I dug a big hole, put in some handfuls of mycorrhizal fungi, lots of gallons of water and planted a Desert Willow.  I dug another hole, same process, but I haven't planted the tree yet.  I will put in a Guajillo in that spot. 
• Sunday.  I spent the better part of the day watering my holes that I dug.  I was trying to empty the tank in the Water Garden.  I put gallons of water on all my plants in the Water Garden and filled my holes over and over until the tank was empty.  I think that tank is 200 gallons.  I will have to confirm that.  I planted the Guajillo.  I made more holes and planted Blue Grama gas (native bunch grass) around the Guajillo.  I planted a Cat's Claw, same water and fertilizer routine.  Blue grama grass around it.  I planted Sideoats Grama plugs along one of the trails.  I'm trying to make paths using grasses as my edges.  And in this garden, I am not planning to lay down decomposed granite paths.  I'm just going to let whatever is there stay there.  For now anyway.  It is so dry over there that nothing is growing tall.  But maybe when the drought ends I will think better of that idea.  I know the bunch grasses will crowd out other plants / weed / crabgrass.  But if the paths get our of control I will poison them and lay down some mulch.  I would prefer to keep them natural.  It would certainly be less work.  When I can afford it, I will buy some very large boulders and some bull rock to make rocky beds.  And over time I will put in some additional drought tolerant native plants such as Copper Canyon daisy (fall bloomer), Texas Red Yucca (summer bloomer), and Blackfoot Daisy (summer bloomer).  One I get to those type of plantings, I will amend the soil.  I'm not necessarily locked in to the idea of only native plantings. it's more about xeriscape plants.  But I will try to stick to natives where I can.  I'm still looking around for large shrubs for the garden.  I will have a very large center space that will need something.  Something really special. 
•  Pulled weeds in the Orchard.  It looks really good in there.  Weed free everywhere.  I just need to go in there every time I'm here and maintenance it.  
• Weeded in the Vegetable Garden.  Sowed a row of red lettuce.  None of the lettuce seed I sowed last week or so came up.  
• Sprayed herbicide here and there where I missed last week.
• Pulled up some large basil plants in the Rose Garden in preparation for sowing seeds.
• Spot watered in the Long Border and the Rose Garden.
• Watered my roses in pots.
• Watered all my new trees - 3 Witch Hazels, Pineland Wattle, Senna, Parsley Hawthorn, Anacachoe Orchid Tree, and Two Winged Silverbell.  I like to name all of them so it will remind me not to forget any of them when I'm watering trees.  I will have to baby them for several years.  Growing trees successfully is not easy.  And a drought makes it a real challenge.  

Flowers Blooming Now October 8, 2022

 This is a pink Four O'Clock.  There is a big stand of them behind the Vegetable Garden.  I tried to pull them all up, but you can never really get rid of them.

Grandpa Ott morning glories growing on the goat wire in the Vegetable Garden.

Oxblood lily in the Rose Edge Border.

Champneys Pink Cluster rose blooms and Mexican Torch sunflowers.

Mexican sunflower

Butterflies and bumble bees love these Mexican sunflowers.

Gomphrena

Castor plant

Zinnias

Yellow flame anacanthus in the Star Garden.

Fall blooming ageratum.

Polar Bear zinnia

Heliopsis. zinnia, butterfly weed, salvia

Prince's Feather in the Star Garden.

Zinnias, gomphrena, salvias

Sternbergia blooms, called the fall crocus.

Three Days at the Farm September 23 - 25, 2022

 

Franziska Kreuger rose

Minerva althea

Took Friday vacation and Bert and I drove up Thursday night after dinner with the Big Six for Mom and Dad's 63rd wedding anniversary dinner at Costa Brava.

• Friday.  Straight out to the Orchard.  It looked better than how I remembered leaving it last weekend.  So that was a good development.  I cut back salvia.  I pulled up crabgrass (which can be a real chore when it gets really rooted into a mat).  I cut down coneflower stems and spread the seeds.  I raked wherever I was working as I went along so that I wouldn't be too tired at the end to do it.  I sowed Ox Eye daisy seed in moist semi-shaded areas such as under the fruit trees and behind the screen covered with Sweet Autumn Clematis.  I cut down lily stems.  I finished cutting back the native lantana and threw the seed in the Meadow.  I spent about 3 hours down there.  It looks good.  If I go down there on Saturday and do a bit more I think it will be in good shape.  I want to spread some more wildflower seeds as well.
• I pulled up basil seedlings and weeds in the Vegetable Garden.
• I spent some time pulling up the dreaded camphor weed and woolly croton in the Meadow.  Those are both invasives.  My goal this weekend is to pull up all of it in the top section of the Meadow.  Next year I will have to get to it earlier down the slope where it's everywhere.  I can spray it when it's small and effectively kill it.  I let it get away from me this year and last year.  That's why it's so bad this year - because I didn't do anything about it last year.  Now I have a real problem.  
• I spent about an hour in the Star Garden.  I weeded and cut summer plants away from autumn plants.  I cut down lots and lots of salvia.  I remember thinking what a great discovery a re-seeding blue salvia was, but now it's everywhere.  
• I planted some starts of Wandering Jew underneath the Almond Verbena.  It's always been sort of a no mans land under there.  I cut some stems from the Houston Garden and brought them here to plant.  I just stuck them in the ground, I am assuming that's all I need to do.  That stuff is pretty hardy.  I like the purple color, and I like that I'm adding a new foliage color to the garden.
• Inside for the hottest part of the day.
• Back outside about 4:00.  I watered here and there.  
• I cut down a truck full of woolly croton at the bottom of the hill in the Meadow.  I dumped it in the fire since it's an invasive.  I didn't want to use it in an erosion spot.
• In the early evening I went out to the Rose Garden and spot watered.  I cut down a bunch of gomphrena growing up around my Katy Pink.
• September has really gotten away from me.  I haven't planted any fall vegetables. 
• Saturday.  Cool morning, but got hot quickly.  Still, fall is starting, and that's wonderful.
• I went straight out to the Orchard.  I pulled some weeds and did more raking, but it was for perfection.  It looks really good in there.  I sowed Moss Verbena, gold yarrow, and Black-eyed Susan seed in a lot of the beds.  I trimmed grape vines and cut down a few blackberry canes that died (I don't know why, they were new growth).  I smoothed out a bunch of leaf cutter ant nests which didn't look active because I didn't see any holes.  I spent about 2 hours down there.
• I cut down some more woolly croton at the bottom of the hill.  The stems are so thick that it would take too much energy to pull them up.
• I went up to the top of the Meadow, and as planned, I pulled up a truck load of woolly croton and camphor weed.  It is a bummer to be pulling weeds in a field!  Below are before and after pictures which I took as support for one of my wildlife management requirements. That was some hard work. 

BEFORE    

AFTER

• Next, I weeded in the Vegetable Garden, and I planted 60 feet of Blue Lake 274 bush beans. If we have our first freeze after Thanksgiving and not before, I will get some beans.
• Inside for the hot part of the day.  Napped.
• Spot watered here and there throughout the Rose Garden and the Water Garden.
• I raked in the Greenhouse Gardens.
• Sowed a 3 foot row of Merlot lettuce in the Vegetable Garden.
• I sowed Moss Verbena in various places in the Star Garden along the front of beds where it can spill over the edges.
• Gathered lots of seed from my Mexican Buckeyes and threw it in the Meadow.  I should have been doing that all these many years.  It's dry out there, but I'm sure some of them would have rooted.  Mexican Buckeye is very easy to root from seed.  It doesn't need any special treatment such as chilling. 
• I watered all my new trees planted near the Rose Garden:  Huisache, 3 Witch Hazels, and the Parsley Hawthorn.
• Cut back some salvia in the Rose Garden.  Pulled weeds.
• I used some chicken wire that was down in the Orchard and covered up some gaps along the bottom of the fence,  I'm not having a lot of trouble from armadillos down there anymore - I think we put a dent in the population - but I was right there holding the chicken wire.
• Sunday.  Outside at first light.  I walked out to the Water Garden and every leaf had been eaten off my Icecap rose.   I noticed some leaves gone on Saturday, and I thought with dismay that it was a deer.  But this morning I realized it was leaf cutter ants which makes sense since the rose right next to it was fine, not a bite taken (so not deer).  I searched for the trail and found it easily.  Leaf cutter ants will wear a trail in the grass and dirt as they move back and forth between their food source and their nest.  I've seen the nest entrances throughout the summer, but they were so far away from any of my gardens that I ignored them.  Big mistake.   I poisoned all around my rose, along the trail and at the entrance holes to 10 or so nest entrances.  I went down to the Orchard and saw that they were already re-building their low mounds in there.  So I poisoned those as well.  Unfortunately I ran out of ant poison before I finished.  Destructive little insects.
• I cleaned out all the beds in the hinterlands as well as the ginger bed.  Not much is growing because of the drought - I depend on rain to water those areas, and there has been none to speak of.  But Basketgrass mats were everywhere.  I cut down any wild petunia I came across.  I cleaned under the pink Vitex as well.  Cut away red shrimp plant from the path.  Cut away Climbing Pinkie that was drooping over the path.  I cleaned up stick and twigs in the wild areas of the garden.  Spot watered.  Weeded, weeded, weeded.  I raked the paths everywhere I worked.  It looks really good in that area.   
• I sowed a six foot row of dill in the Vegetable Garden.  Pulled some weeds.  Looks good in there too.  Yay me.
• Giant Swallowtails are plentiful in the garden.  I've seen some Queens as well.  And the little skippers are every-present.  But no Monarchs.  Not a one.
• I seeded the Rose Garden with Moss Verbena, Ox Eyes, Anise Hyssop, and gold yarrow.  I set up the sprinklers so that all the spots would get watered, and I put bamboo stakes in the ground everywhere I sowed seeds.  It's hard to remember where I have sowed seeds, so the markers will help.  When I move the sprinklers around to spot water, I know where to put the sprinklers back. 
• Sprayed herbicide everywhere - around the pool, in the Orchard, in the Rose Garden, the Star Garden, along fence lines, in the Shade Garden, on the path behind the house, and the Greenhouse Gardens.  
• I planted a little Two Winged Silverbell tree adjacent to the Anacacho Orchid tree.  Lots of water in the hole and some fertilizer. 
• This was a great weekend.  I felt like I was on fire with energy.  I love it when I get motivated to do a bunch of stuff that I have walked past for a long time.  I will pass by something over and over and think, "I need to fix that."  But I keep walking.  This weekend I fixed lots of things.
• Headed home about 3:00.

Prince's Feather September 23, 2022

 I got my start from some seed that I gathered off of a plant at the Antique Rose Emporium.  I love the color of the foliage.  I encourage it whenever I see a seedling.  There are not too many yet, but in a few years I will have a lot because it reseeds freely. 

In this photo is gomphrena, Prince's Feather, Pringle Aster, Henry Duelberg and Augusta Duelberg salvias, Heliopsis, zinnia. and ageratum.

The color is so striking.

It is just starting to bloom.  The blooms will get longer.